


Tanglebuddies

by traceExcalibur



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-13
Updated: 2011-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-27 07:40:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traceExcalibur/pseuds/traceExcalibur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade awakens once more in the dreambubbles, and has visions of Feferi. She and the Horrorterrors just want to convince Jade that everything is going to be fine, that they can help her...Jade isn't so convinced.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tanglebuddies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



You have got to stop falling asleep.

The first dream was bad enough; it opened the floodgates to something sinister, something far beyond your comprehension. Shapes, images…Squiddles, but not Squiddles. They were far stranger, and far worse. Their gaze cold, and creepy. Unyielding. A sense of dread, a strange ringing noise in your ears, and they were all around you, swarming you…and then it was over.

You woke up. But the nightmare lingered. The images were still fresh in your mind, and unlike a normal nightmare, they did not fade with time. You walked up to your house, but every time you blinked, one of them was staring at you. What were they? Creatures, of some sort. Gods of the Furthest Ring. They just wanted to help you.

No, no they didn’t, and why did that thought come, unbidden, to you? They were horrible. Evil. They were disgusting and terrifying and you never wanted to see them again, ever.

But with every blink, they were there. When your eyes closed you sank into their caress again, and fought to escape. What did they want with you? What did _she_ want with you, and why did she show you them?

You wanted nothing more than to sleep, and dream peacefully. Even better, not to dream at all. You wanted to close your eyes and see nothing.

You were distracted by a great many things; a meteor about to hit your house, a conversation with your best friend – and brother, apparently – and a fair few explosions. Something must have worked, because you managed to enter the session alright. It was exhausting, though. Your body won the fight with your mind, and you fell back asleep.

The second dream was surreal. It was like a memory, but memories are supposed to be solid, and unchanging. This one was different. You were having a conversation with her; it was sometime before you sent John his present. But where the conversation should have ended…it didn’t. More perplexingly, she was there in your room. And her eyes…oh god, her _eyes._

You woke up with a start. You vowed never to sleep again.

But here you are.

The frog gathering was too tiring for you to do all alone, and Dave was nowhere to be found. You wonder if he would appreciate the irony; the man with all the Time in the world couldn’t make it to you before you fell asleep again. Or maybe he did, but he had to let you fall asleep because the alpha timeline said so. Time travel bullshit is so confusing.

You are in your room; at least, you are in some eldritch facsimile of your room. Everything looks right – the bedspread is tidy, your Squiddles are scattered about, the posters on the walls are the same – but everything feels wrong. The view from your windows does not help. Where there should be a beautiful ocean stretching before you , with light twinkling from atop the water, and wind rushing around the verdant fields of the island, there is instead darkness. It wraps around your room as if to coddle you, but it serves only to suffocate you. Creatures shift around in the murky mists, creatures with slimy tentacles, sharp teeth, and bloodshot orbs twisting around in place of eyes.

“Hey, Jade!”

Feferi speaks behind you and you start, twisting around on the spot to look at her. Her eyes, as they were when you last saw her, are glassy and white. Twin pearls set behind milky barriers, devoid of life, yet still capable of sight. Locks of hair fall past her shoulders in tangled, slithering strands, always wet, even above the sea. She grins, sharp and toothy, a mouth with teeth to rival a shark. For a moment, the light plays a trick, and you swear you see a gaping wound in her chest; you look through her gutless hole, which drips with magenta blood, and see a face leering from a poster on the wall behind her. Then, quick as it came, the vision vanishes and she is whole again. Feferi is like a ghost sent to torment your wakeless hours, but she does not seem to realize it. She is innocent, and that is perhaps the most terrifying thought of them all.

“Feferi! Don’t barge into my dreams like that, you will scare the shit out of me!” you say, clutching at your heart. She tilts her head. She doesn’t really understand.

“I’m sorry Jade.” she says. “I reely do not have a choice in the matter. We are at the mercy of the elder Gods! Only they can conchtrol these bubbles.”

She pronounces her ‘H’s with an odd quality, as if she struggles to produce them at all. Many of her ‘E’s are much the same, bristling with excitement, taking a while to burst out. You catch her emphasizing the ‘eel’ in her ‘really’, and the ‘conch’ in ‘control’. The puns might suffice for a giggle or two in lighter circumstances, but here they do nothing to ease your nerves. If anything, they worsen them.

“Can they take us somewhere nicer?” you ask. “I can see them outside my windows, and they are creeping me out!”

“They’re nothing to be afraid of!” she tells you. She is trying to smile gently, but not quite managing it. “They seek to help us. They have given these dreambubbles for the dead to slumber in, and we can use them to communicate. It is vital to our success!”

“I guess you’re right.” you say. If you can talk firsthand to the trolls, it will certainly help you formulate your plan. You still feel uneasy, though.

“Shell we see if they will take us to meet a friend?” she asks you. “If only he were sleeping, we could find Karcrab! Oh, perhaps you would like to visit Nepeta? She is a very fun and silly girl, and I bereef she should be joining the deceased very soon!”

Your heart leaps into your chest with a pang. Another dead troll? She treats the news so casually, as if death were no more than a minor inconvenience. Perhaps, to her, it is. You can’t bring yourself to see it through her eyes.

“I told you to stop using so many puns!” Your voice slices the air, harsher than intended. It is all you can do to keep your mind away from the deathly chill that has enveloped you. Feferi seems taken aback.

“No need to shout, Jade! You just don’t know good humour when you see it. But okay, I will stop, just for you.”

She smiles and peers out the window, waving to one of the beasts outside.

“Are you ready to go find someone?”

“No.” you say.

You can’t stop shaking. You want to leave. You don’t belong here; this is where the dead people are supposed to roam. Not you. You’re alive. You’re alive and if this is what dying is like you don’t ever want to die.

Not ever again.

“I just want to wake up!” you blurt out, and she frowns.

“You’re still scared? That just will not do! Someone as important as you should not be scared, not when we are trying to be of use to you!”

She grins, and spreads her arms wide.

“I will have them show you that they are nothing to fear!”

“No, stop, I don’t want—“

It is too late. The room begins shifting, as if it were alive. The walls peel away, sliding down to reveal the vast darkness behind them. The monsters lurk just beyond your sight, writhing around, forming a circle around you. Your Squiddles vibrate and disappear, the bed vanishes, your magic chest curls in onto itself and it is gone. The floor dissolves next, and it leaves you floating in the midst of the stygian abyss. A great rumbling sounds below you as one of the creatures rises beneath you. You try to run, but your legs do not work. You once spent a lifetime soaring through the golden skies of Prospit, but this land is not your domain, and here you do not know how to fly. You can flail and kick your arms and legs as much as you want, but you will get nowhere.

You are trapped, and try as you might, you cannot force yourself awake.

“This is Akh’prah, the Singer of the Endsong.” Feferi tells you. “But do not worry! Ours is not the universe she is destined to end! She is only fulfilling an obligation, and today she is here to convince you to join us!”

The thing, at first, seems tame compared to some of the abominations that have visited your dreams. It has only two eyes, and one mouth – a mouth fit for a human, which unnerves you more than any alien feature it could have possessed. However, behind it, you see more heads; a cluster of eyes and mouths, feelers sprouting from the seams like bestial hairs, bubbling pustules dotting every surface…

You wrench your eyes shut as it turns to look at you, but already its horrendous visage is seared into your brain.

“Whale, aren’t you going to say hi?”

You shake your head. Your mouth stays firmly shut.

The beast, however, does not keep silent. It speaks in tongues, strange eldritch echoes that seep out in a cacophony of mutters, screaming softly in your ears and tearing your eardrums open, filtering through to your mind and raking claws across your cortex. A distorted song echoes around in the abyss, a song you recognize all too well, but it feels different, sinister…

 _Squiddle dee dee, Squiddle dee dum…_

You try to block it out, try desperately to ignore the voices. A ball of swirling, churning darkness materializes in your mind and you try to push it away, you’d do anything to get rid of it. You try as hard as you can to focus on…something else, anything else… __

You see a light.

A golden hall glimmers on the edge of your memory; visions flit through clouds in days long since passed, and pearly white wanderers greet you with smiles and waves and they all tell you the same thing: ‘Don’t let the darkness fool you.’ The Queen tells you tales of evil beasts, snarling in the soul-less void, whispering seductive stories to the Children of Derse; she warns that though the dreamers be of strong will, they can still be swayed, and it is in your hands to save them. She tells you to keep strong, no matter what happens.

She is dead.

Her kingdom is nothing more than a burning husk.

 _…everyone sing a Squiddley song…_

And you are here, and the whispers of the Elder Gods creep into your ears, stealing refuge in the darkest and coldest corners of your mind. They take root. They plant their seeds of despair and tell you everything you don’t want to hear, that things won’t be ok and your friends are going to die and you need their help, because only they can save you from yourselves. Only they can reach through the darkness to guide you, to offer their assistance…to take you…to bring you to them and forge you into their champion, a saviour of the dreaming dead…

You must resist, you tell yourself. You can’t let them sway you. They’ve already got Rose, they’ve got Feferi, they’re going to get Dave, too.

You can’t blame your friends for falling prey to them…Feferi only wishes to help you. She can’t see them for what they truly are, none of them can, but you…you’re different. You’re a Prospitan dreamer, and you know what lurks beneath the surface, you can see what they cannot…and you mustn’t give in, not now, not ever…

But you need their help. It is the stark and uncomfortable truth. You need a way to communicate with the others and only they can provide it.

 _…let’s all be friends, and work as a team…_

You have to open your eyes. You have to accept their help. It’s the only way, and it terrifies you.

“Do it, Jade. Open them! Talk to my friends!”

Feferi’s voice cuts like a dagger and you begin to bleed uncertainty. Your eyelids flutter for a moment.

You’ve got no time left to be unsure of yourself, no choice but to open your eyes. You fear the darkness and you fear your own will. What if they trick you? What if they use you to further their own ends? What if you, like Rose and Feferi before you, succumb to their dreadful whispers?

 _…Squiddles for you, and Squiddles for me…_

But no.

You must be stronger than that. You need to use their help and you can’t, you just _can’t_ let them influence you.

You channel every fiber of your being into Prospit. You let those golden streets and the rush of flight and every grin you ever saw and every laugh you ever heard and everything that you ever thought was good, every single dream you had that ever made you wake with a smile and every nice word ever spoken in that great city, the woman who would never rest until the mail was delivered and the Queen who would never rest until you became a Hero and every other friend you made…you take all those experiences and those conversations and those people’s memories and you let them course through your veins and flood your mind and slowly, very very slowly, you open your eyes and you stare deep into the abyss.

Everything seems to snap, and a rush of images and words is carved into your mind, Prospit vanishes and their voices rend your mind and they tell you everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _…tangle buddies…_

 

*****

 _  
_

**  
\-- carcinoGeneticist  ** ** [CG]  ** ** began trolling gardenGnostic  ** ** [GG]  ** ** \--   
**

CG: TANGLEBUDDIES.

CG: THERE.

CG: THERE’S YOUR GOD DAMN PASSWORD. RIGHT OUT IN THE OPEN WHERE WE ALL CAN SEE IT.

CG: NO FUNNYBUSINESS HERE AND NO FUCKING AROUND.

CG: BECAUSE I HAVE JUST ONE THING TO SAY

CG: AND IT IS:

CG: I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE SLEEPING AGAIN.

CG: I THOUGHT WE BOTH AGREED THAT THOSE FUCKED UP DREAMS WERE NOTHING BUT BAD NEWS, AND THAT WE WOULD DO OUR DAMNDEST TO STAY THE FUCK AWAKE EVEN IF IT MEANT BASHING OUR PANS IN WITH A RUSTY SICKLE EVERY TIME WE STARTED TO DOZE.

CG: DID WE NOT MAKE THIS PACT?

CG: OK, YOU’RE NOT WAKING UP.

CG: WHATEVER.

CG: I’VE GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO ANYWAY.

 ** \-- carcinoGeneticist ** ** [CG]  ** ** ceased trolling gardenGnostic  ** ** [GG]  ** ** \-- **

** \-- gardenGnostic ** ** [GG]  ** ** began pestering carcinoGeneticist  ** ** [CG]  ** **\--**

GG: oh karkat shut up!!! :P

GG: and thank you for the password

GG: see how much easier it is to talk to me when we dont have to go through all of your stupid bullshit??

CG: OH LOOK, LITTLE MISS SLEEPYHEAD MESSAGED ME BACK.

CG: BACK FROM YOUR HAPPY LITTLE ROMP THROUGH PAN MELTING NIGHTMARE VALLEY, I SEE.

CG: AND LOOKING THROUGH MY VIEWPORT I CAN’T HELP BUT NOTICE YOU’RE NOT COWERING IN FEAR THIS TIME.

CG: SO, IF I MAY POLITELY POSIT THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE AND COMPLETELY POLITE REVIEWAL…

CG: WHAT THE FUCK, HARLEY?

GG: i know i said i wasnt sleeping at first and i thought i meant it

GG: but it turns out its not that bad!!!

CG: NO. NO NO NO NO NO

CG: YOU’RE NOT SAYING THIS

CG: YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY THINK THAT THOSE THINGS ARE ANYTHING EVEN REMOTELY RESEMBLING GOOD NEWS.

GG: yes i can possibly think that! >:\

GG: i do think it in fact!!!

GG: they look mean and nasty at first but they are only trying to help us

GG: i talked to them with feferi and they are alright

GG: i promise :)

CG: UGH.

CG: WHATEVER, YOU’RE NOT GETTING ME TO TRY SLEEPING, OK?

CG: AS IF I’VE GOT THE FUCKING TIME.

GG: yes, you have already made it quite clear that you are busy with your leadership

GG: so you go do that, ok? <3

GG: feferi and i will take care of all the dreaming!!

CG: YEAH, OK, FINE.

CG: I’VE GOT TO RUN ANYWAYS, SOME OF MY TEAMMATES ARE STARTING TO WANDER OFF AND I’VE GOT TO GET THEIR FEEBLEMINDED ASSES BACK ONTO “SAVE OUR COLLECTIVE SHITS” BOULEVARD

CG: I.E. BACK IN THE LAB WHERE I CAN SEE THEM

CG: BEFORE THEY GO FUCK SOMETHING UP.

CG: SO, CONTINUING WITH MY EXTREMELY FUCKING KIND BEHAVIOUR WHICH IS TOTALLY NOT A COMPLETE WASTE OF MY TIME, I AM NOW GOING TO ASK FOR THE NEW PASSWORD, PLEASE AND FUCKING THANK YOU.

GG: oh shoosh!! >:B

GG: your next password is

GG: hmmm

GG: “help me!”

CG: HUH?

CG: JADE, ARE YOU SURE SOMETHING ISN’T

GG: it just is, OK!!!!! >:(

GG: dont ask me about it, im perfectly fine, i promise!!!!!!!!!!!

 ** \-- gardenGnostic ** ** [GG] ** **  ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist  ** ** [CG]  ** ** \--   
**

CG: OK, FUCK, WHATEVER YOU SAY, SHITSPONGE.

CG: GOD, I WISH YOU COULD CUT THE MYSTERIOUS BULLSHIT AND JUST SAY WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND FOR A CHANGE.

CG: BYE.

 ** \-- carcinoGeneticist ** ** [CG] ** **  ceased trolling gardenGnostic  ** ** [GG]  ** ** \--   
**

 

 

 


End file.
